Jasmine Elizabeth

In being who I am, I and everything I create are inextricably linked to a social and political identity. When I overthink my ideas, I find myself feeling they are beholden to something or someone else, some greater history that I have no control over, though I am constantly considering. I wonder how I will engage with this history and when and where I enter into it; this kind of discourse, for someone like me, with a penchant to over analyse, is overwhelming.

I live in a reality where lines are not so clear, where when someone looks at me, they may see many things or only one. It becomes the onus of the person who is beholding to decide or determine what I am. I say what as opposed to who because that is usually what people try to arrive at either directly or indirectly, sensitively or insensitively. The path and the conclusion are always different, but in the end, it is always the same. Me, as object, not as myself; me as whatever someone else sees, and all of the feelings and experiences they bring along with that conclusion.

I remember someone who eventually became a friend of mine, an older woman, said to me in our first open conversation, where no one else was present: “What, if I may ask, are you?” She asked in such ...

Fourtunehouse
Woman Made Gallery
Las Laguna Art Gallery